Mark Frost - The Secret History of Twin Peaks

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Mark Frost, Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier

I’ve taken in a LOT of media and analysis of Twin Peaks in the last month, and I think this points at one of the hearts of the project. Whether it succeeds, or how we would even know…? But I see this, especially in The Return and its emphasis on split natures, its brutal depiction of common suffering, and its insistent reminders that we are… dreaming? … and I’m trying to reconcile Lynch’s work with meditation and raising consciousness with the grimy, visceral nastiness visible in so much of his art. None of it seems to be reveling in darkness; when it shows true horror, we are not meant to be entertained. That violence is a rupture in the persistent possible sweetness of mundane coexistence. Appreciation for the quiet moment, the strange phrase, the loving smile. But we all have to pass through, for some reason, the monstrosity of puberty, to feel our minds and bodies warp and twist, overcome by unknown forces, hoping we come out the other side a decent person. Most people don’t, not immediately; it’s our burden to reflect, to study, to bend our branches back toward sunlight, away from blood and towards the rain.

But we have a massive, massive collective problem. An awful lot of people aren’t afforded the space and peace to do that reflection. Some ends are served by starving and prodding. Twin Peaks illustrates these conditions, again to varying degrees of success for any given person. And I think part of why they show us moments of goodness, but then land in confusion or horror, isn’t because that’s “the truth” or inescapable. I think it’s a splinter we’re meant to work out.

Or maybe it’s all bullshit, and I’m projecting. Either way, I like this train of thought, and the idea of making art with these intentions.

Electricity — Power — Shock — Thought

panic! at the disco — collar full

realllllly love this album, still. oh, show me your love!

bill wurtz - if the world doesn't end

I stare at my reflection to the bone.
Blurred eyes look back at me, full of blame and sympathy.
"So, so close."

from PROMETHEA, pictures I took in 2014:

one of our most precious gifts is how we perceive. when everything feels sharp, it makes perfect sense to pull away, to seek shelter. looking back over my photos, I can see a progression just over the last ten years away from beauty, wonder, amusement, and love. I can tell my mind has become a less hospitable place for lighthearted and profound feelings.

there are infinite “reasons” for that. the world i inhabit became much, much more overtly cruel and difficult in that interval. several pillars of emotional and material support collapsed. and most pressingly, I can just see the gradual erosion of my well-being as years of financial hardship wore on, despite my best efforts. it’s been hard to live in this world, which made it harder and harder to live in this mind. I can’t overstate how important this awareness is, and how it should guide the way we treat people collectively. we have to create as much space for calm, pleasure, and safe reflection as we can.

I’m trying, and sometimes succeeding, to cultivate more of that space for myself. I feel unspeakable anguish over what I’ve lost, most acutely when viewing evidence of simple times that I used to enjoy so much. sitting at the Heirloom counter for a couple hours on a Sunday morning, back when I could afford that one treat and I reveled in it, when it was safe and comfortable to simply be among people in a small room, when the ideas flowing through me from books were alive and colorful and beautiful. when certain love was easy, before whatever happens to make it brittle.

I can see it fade and leave. some things will never come back. my losses are deeply personal, and also not the worst that can happen to a person. and even though it’s become so much harder, I maintain a capacity to laugh, play, explore, and seek beauty of all kinds. I don’t feel it as often. it’s excruciating to be aware of how I’ve changed that way.

but what we see can change. not only for the worse. how we see. it’s not a fixed point. it really can feel that way, especially during the worst times!!!

but I’m trying to remind and be reminded that things will change, and that I’m allowed to put a hand on the rudder.

Just thinking in the middle of the night

Five Iron Frenzy — Blizzards and Bygones

I absolutely love the instrumentation on this song. Shuddering drums; icicle-glittering guitars; the brass and vocal wind blowing frozen through the trees. Describing the difficulty, and trying to summon up the courage to continue.

Back when the angels of heaven would sing
Days when I still made you feel something

Blizzards and bygones, all frost and no thaw
Airways constricting, and vessels withdrawn
And you look around but find yourself all alone
And you hunker down but the cold's already in your bones

There's a flicker of desire, and a memory of youth
A faintly glowing fire

Can you stand the weather if winter lasts forever?

Five Iron Frenzy — Tyrannis

Never mind who's hands plowed your ground
While you long for yesterday
Stars and Bars for empty pride still flying
The same flag as the KKK

Tyrants all cowered beneath white lies
Murderers memorialized
All your world was wrought in violence
Traitors training fellow tyrants

Your generals are dead and buried
Lost to time, the cause they carried
The statues that they never earned
We'll bulldoze as your flags are burned

Full text here.

I wake up the same body, but the familiar options—those enliveners of fantasy and nightmare—remain: walk out of my life; dissolve into poverty; quit; do as little as possible; stop taking the medication; act and spend erratically; take the ones I love along with me into some supposedly ennobling venture; die, or whatever. I wake up and take the orange pill and blink until those options feel ridiculous. I eat food and the options fade away. I'm "back in my body", "right with the world", "able to handle it".

you have to spit on the meaning, rub its wet grit into your thumb, to see its color.

The jobs are bad because they're killing us. The idea is that they're supposed to keep us alive, but they don't. We keep ourselves alive; the jobs do not.

The jobs are a narrow gate through which human desire must pass. We built the gate and made it small. People know this. People want to break the gate. Practically, this means that people want to not work. If taken seriously, that desire will carry us into a future that prioritizes life over death, heaven over hell, earth over ideas.

I am incapable of understanding the degree to which my body has been damaged by more than two years of rarely leaving my dwelling. I can sense how I'm dumber: the words come slow or not at all; my memory's shot; the prospect of working on anything for more than an hour at a time seems impossible, like climbing a mountain with broken ankles. There are parts of me, parts private to my mind, that seem to have been cut out of me. There are days in which blinking feels a chore. Where drinking water seems to be the only comprehensible activity. All this, and I haven't even had COVID, a disease whose longterm symptoms can just wreck a life.

So the price of living has been to collect a bunch of wounds. I dream of being rewarded for my diligence, my patience. For example: if health insurance were freely available to me, I'd weep with joy for days. And this is proof of how the wounded are made to stop dreaming.

We pay and protect six men and three women to decree what ninety or so million women can or can't do when they're pregnant (this being just one matter we celebrate those nine for discerning). Their decision—like all decisions of the powerful—affects how people structure their lives. This decision deletes futures, captures minds, erases already-unsteady feelings of charity and love, prevents the woman from saying something, prevents the woman from saying what they want, prevents women from living safely and peaceably with themselves among others. One decision, one judgement; we let the six men and three women do this ruling for the rest of their lives.

We do this because we collectively treat four pages signed by thirty-nine men as a sacred text by which the lives and dignities of our neighbors may and must be assessed. Of course twelve of the men who signed this holy document enslaved (or: tortured, as a matter of course) people.

I'll say it simply: we're fools.

The field has no doors. But we do know it, too. It's the place described by the freaks who beg peace, by those who die unthinkingly into love. Part of why we kill those people is so that they stop describing the field.

Because once you taste the air of the field, you recognize that there aren't actually any other places to be. That the others are not in rooms, but are clumped together in the field, communally hallucinating their doors and walls. And of course once you know this you have to say it, because the truth has a way of being good to say.

Full text here.